A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Christianity which were beyond the pale of the Act (such as The Conventicle 

 Act, 1664, the Five Mile Act, 1665, and the Test Act, 1673) all came into 

 active operation in Northamptonshire. 



With the passing of the Act of Uniformity the ecclesiastical history of 

 Northamptonshire, like that of other counties, enters on its third stage. The 

 constant theological and ecclesiastical ferment had ended by settling two 

 questions. It was now certain that the whole nation could not be comprised 

 in any one religious society, and it was clear that the special society recognized 

 by the state as the Church of England should be an episcopalian body in com- 

 munion neither with the Church of Rome nor with the non-episcopal bodies. 

 In future there were to be three main divisions of Christianity in England, 

 the Anglican, the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant Nonconformist, and 

 the ecclesiastical history of the county from this time can best be outlined in 

 three divisions corresponding to these three currents of opinion. But it 

 should be noted that while before 1663, high religious fervour and spiritual 

 power were often displayed at the same time by the three schools of thought 

 now to be stereotyped as Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Nonconformist, after 

 1663 there is a curious alternation of spiritual energy which in this county 

 as in others makes the importance of the several communities vary greatly 

 from time to time. 



First in regard to the Church of England, as already pointed out, there 

 were many more Episcopalian clergy in Northamptonshire than those of 

 Presbyterian or Independent principles, and since there were also a consider- 

 able number who acquiesced in the arrangements of the time whatever they 

 were, it came about that an overwhelming majority of the beneficed clergy 

 acceded to the Act of Uniformity and retained their livings. It is certain 

 also that the bulk of the laity in the county took the same line. The 

 country gentry who had supported Puritanism hardly ever followed it into 

 the wilderness of dissent, and powerful though the anti-episcopal forces in 

 the county had been for the previous three generations, the vast majority of 

 the county adhered, with more or less cordiality, to the Church of England 

 as now defined by the Act of Uniformity. This is strikingly shown by the 

 religious census of 1676. The returns presented by the clergy to the bishop, 

 which in Northamptonshire came in from all save twelve of the smallest 

 parishes, show 83,970 Conformists, 1,972 Nonconformists, and only 

 102 Roman Catholics. This return shows a smaller percentage of Roman 

 Catholics than any other county ; there were practically none in the towns, 

 the parishes with the largest number being Deene, thirty, and Welford, 

 nineteen.' So large a proportion of the population having accepted the 

 settlement, the history of the Church of England in the county during 

 Charles IPs reign, and for long after, is uneventful. Persecution still occurred 

 here and there,* but there is no ground for thinking that it was frequent. 



The first matter of consequence to note after the Restoration is the share 

 of Northamptonshire clergy in the famous movement of the non-jurors. 

 Bishop White, of Peterborough, was one of the famous seven bishops sent to 

 the Tower by James II for refusing to sign his illegal Declaration of Indul- 



' There are two copies of this return (which has hitherto been almost entirely ignored by statisticians and 

 historians), namely at the William Salt Library, Stafford, and at the Bodleian, Tanner MS. No. 150. Derby- 

 shire has 588 Papists to 47,151 Conformists, and Hants has 846 Papists to 70,640 Conformists. 



' Coleman, Hist, of Independent Churches in Northants. (1853), 51. 



62 



